Spiciness hurts, but at the same time, it gives us pleasure. Some people say they have a love-hate relationship with spicy food. Growing up in the country eating spicy kimchi from a very young age, I was curious about the spicy trends of other parts of the world.
Search Trends on 'Spicy Food'
This is a graph that shows how the search trends of Spicy food have gradually increased over the years. The numbers represent the search interest relative to the highest point on the chart for the selected region and time. A value of 100 is the peak popularity of the term, whilst a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular. The selected region is worldwide, the time range is from January 1st-2004 to September 1st-2021. Although there have been up and downs of interest over the years, it is inferred that the popularity was about the least (the value of 13, January 2004) but reached its peak number on September 1st, 2021.
Chili Pepper Consumption in the world
What makes spicy food spicy? You will answer in no doubt, “spicy chili peppers!” The proportional graph below visualizes the ratio of chili pepper consumption in all 195 countries in the world.
The countries with the highest volumes of pepper consumption in 2018 were Viet Nam (166K tonnes), India (86K tonnes), and the U.S. (68K tonnes), with a combined 41% share of global consumption. These countries were followed by Bulgaria, Indonesia, China, Singapore, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Germany, the United Arab Emirates, and the UK, which together accounted for a further 33%. Excluding these 12 countries, the other 183 countries shared the remaining 26% of global consumption. As for consumption per capita, Vietnam ranked first among the three countries, followed by the U.S, and India.
Chili Pepper production and trade
Now we've looked at chili pepper consumption, another curiosity comes into mind: would the countries that consume the most produce the most? What about trade, exports, and imports value? The following three graphs show the top 10 chili pepper producers, importers, and exporters in the world.
Top 10 Chili pepper producers
According to the data collected in 2019, China is the largest producer of spicy chili peppers, followed by Mexico, Turkey, Indonesia, Spain, the Arab Republic of Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, the United States of America, and Tunisia. The numbers stand for the quantities of dried chili peppers and green chili peppers produced (tonnes). The production quantity in China is overwhelmingly higher than in other countries: about 6 times higher than in Mexico, which is ranked second.
Top 10 Chili pepper Importers
The US was ranked the top importer of chili peppers in 2019, followed by Germany, the United Kingdom, France, the Russian Federation, Canada, Spain, Netherlands, Italy, Algeria, and Japan. Surprisingly, China, which was the top producer of chili peppers, was not included in the top 10 rankings in 2019. The import quantity of the US was about three times higher than Germany, whereas there was no significant difference in the quantities between the other 9 countries.
Top 10 Chili pepper Exporters
In terms of export quantity, Mexico was ranked the highest in 2019, followed by Spain, Netherlands, China, Canada, Morocco, the United States of America, Turkey, Israel, and the Republic of Korea. Interestingly, the US is ranked 8 in global exports, and China ranked 5, whereas they were top importers and producers in 2019.
Top 12 hottest peppers
How spicy the peppers can be? Which countries produce the hottest peppers? I came across an astonishing result during the research. The graph below sorts the top 12 spicy peppers in the world.
To give you some more context, below image cards and the map shows how the peppers look, and where they are located. Four of the twelve peppers are originated in Trinidad, three in the United States of America, three in the United Kingdom, and the rest from Bangladesh and India. According to the data last updated in December 2020, Pepper X is the world's hottest pepper, which is 6 times hotter than Habanero, and 397 times hotter than Jalapeño peppers!
Popular Peppers
Now we’ve looked at the hottest peppers in the world, but what are the most commonly used and popular peppers? The below image cards show the 9 widely-used peppers around the world.
Four of the nine are originated in Mexico, two in the United States of America, and the rest from French Guiana and India. The Scoville units range from 1,000 to 1000,000+.
Tasty combinations
Globally, consumers are most interested in trying spicy/salty combinations, followed by spicy/sweet and spicy/tangy combinations, according to online surveys conducted by Kalsec. That means the food matrix matters to the overall experience of the pungency.
If you are a lover of sweet and savory foods, what about adding a little spicy taste to your favourite food for dinner tonight? I guarantee it would enhance the taste, plus, maybe you could become a part of our spicy food gang!